Helo industry planning to hire in 2010

Good news for job hunters–and the helicopter industry. A survey of 500 aviation companies by JSfirm (Booth No. 3611), an employment Web site dedicated to the aviation industry, finds 80 percent of employers in the helicopter industry expect to hire employees this year. Major areas of job growth will be in production (assembly and maintenance) and flight-crew positions, followed by sales, engineering and management positions. The survey found the companies plan to do their hiring over the next three quarters.

This is the first such survey the Fort Worth, Texas-based firm, founded in 1999, has conducted. “We’re trying to predict what’s going to happen in 2010 just like everybody else,” said managing partner Joel Meanor. “We can better serve our customers by knowing what’s going on instead of guessing.”

On the company’s Web site, job seekers can post résumés without charge while employers pay to post jobs and access the 100,000 résumés in the database. And reflecting the positive hiring forecast, JSfirm reports its sales have doubled in the past year and it now has about 4,000 customer companies. Fees range from $99 for a one-month job posting and résumé access to an annual package of unlimited job postings and résumé access for about $2,000.

“If you want to find an avionics engineer in Georgia who has systems experience, you can find it,” Scanlon said.

Web site traffic has also been increasing, reaching a reported 8.3 million hits in January. The site also provides ancillary services, such as tips on résumé writing. “Keep it simple,” Meanor advised, as a general rule for resumes. “Simple information that pertains to what you do.”

While the Web presents the most visible face of the company, Scanlon and Meanor stress that the company has a strong human presence and provides phone support and other customer assistance. “Our staff cares about these people,” Scanlon said of job posters and seekers. “We say we change lives every day, and it’s true.”Meanwhile, the company is doing its own part to boost the employment outlook.“We are hiring,” said Scanlon. “We have a pretty aggressive hiring forecast.”